The Nigerian government is reportedly urging Binance to disclose information about its top 100 users in the country as part of its efforts to crack down on the exchange. Additionally, Nigerian authorities have requested that Binance provide transaction records from the past six months, according to a report by the Financial Times on March 13. The office of Nigeria’s national security adviser has also asked Binance to address any outstanding tax obligations. These requests are part of ongoing negotiations between Binance and Nigeria, with the country claiming that Binance has had a significant impact on the local currency, the Nigerian naira.
Bayo Onanuga, the presidential adviser on information and strategy, has argued that Binance and other cryptocurrency platforms have manipulated the naira and caused a significant decline in the value of the local fiat currency. Onanuga has even suggested banning platforms like Binance in the country. In response to Binance’s attempt to engage in a dialogue with Nigerian authorities, two senior Binance executives, Tigran Gambaryan and Nadeem Anjarwalla, were detained by local prosecutors. Despite Binance delisting all naira transactions and ceasing peer-to-peer naira transactions in late February, the executives remain in detention.
Onanuga has stated that Gambaryan and Anjarwalla have been cooperating with Nigerian authorities and providing a substantial amount of information. He has also hinted that Nigeria may seek to impose a $10 billion fine as a form of retribution, claiming that Binance has “really messed up” the Nigerian economy. The office of the national security adviser has urged the public to allow law enforcement agencies sufficient time and space to carry out their work, stating that the outcomes will be made public in due course.
Binance has chosen not to comment on the specific allegations made by Nigerian authorities. However, a spokesperson for the exchange has informed Cointelegraph that Binance has not exited Nigeria; rather, it has removed all naira trading pairs and transactions.
This situation has raised concerns among some online users about Binance’s ability to continue servicing users in Nigeria. One commenter on X expressed the view that if a company ceases to offer services related to the naira, it indicates that they are disengaging from Nigeria entirely.
Nigeria has become one of the fastest-growing cryptocurrency economies in the world in recent years and is projected to have the second-highest crypto adoption rate by 2023. In August 2022, Nigeria was recognized as the most crypto-obsessed country in the world based on the number of Google searches for “cryptocurrency” or “buy crypto.”
According to the Financial Times, Nigeria abandoned its long-standing currency peg and allowed the naira to trade freely in June 2023. Subsequently, the country experienced record-high inflation. In January 2024, Nigeria’s consumer inflation reached nearly 30%, marking the 13th consecutive month of inflationary increases, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.